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- Volume 12, Issue 3, 2020
Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds - Volume 12, Issue 3, 2020
Volume 12, Issue 3, 2020
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Towards the aesthetics of cozy video games
Authors: Agata Waszkiewicz and Martyna BakunWhile among game journalists and developers the term ‘cozy games’ has recently been gaining popularity, the concept still rarely is discussed in detail in academic circles. While game scholars put more and more focus on the new types of casual games that concentrate mostly on starting discourses on mental health, trauma and the experiences of marginalized people (often referred to as ‘empathy games’), the discussion would benefit from the introduction of the concept of coziness and the use of more precise definitions. The article discusses cozy aesthetics, showing that their popularity correlates with sociopolitical changes especially in Europe and the United States. First, cozy games are defined in the context of feminist and inclusive design. Second, it proposes three types of application of coziness in games depending on their relationship with functionality: coherent, dissonant and situational.
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Visions of the material body: Twitch.tv and post-phenomenology
By Ben EglistonThis article considers what broadcasts of video game play, transmitted through livestreaming platform Twitch.tv, can contribute to discussions around technology, materiality, embodiment and affect in videogaming – an interdisciplinary set of concerns for researchers in the humanities and social sciences. Specifically, I outline the methodological value of Twitch as a tool for addressing video game play as a post-phenomenological concern – providing a perspective of play as not emerging from an autonomous human subject, but from exchanges between humans and non-humans. To demonstrate this, this article discusses observations of livestreamed play of the popular PC-based rhythm game Osu. These observations spotlight how video game play operates as a messy and ongoing relation between bodies and technology, as well as demonstrates how Twitch streams can attend to the often taken-for-granted relations between non-human objects in play, which in turn shape the status of the body as it meets the game.
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New motivations: Change over time in motivations for mobile gaming
Authors: Stephen Carradini and Anya Hommadova LuMany studies of motivations for game play do not consider change in motivations over time. Given the depth of motivations research, this gap seems unusual. In this article, we explore the motivations that players have for beginning, continuing and quitting play in the mobile massively multiplayer online real-time strategy (MMMORTS) game Lords Mobile by reporting on a nineteen-month virtual ethnography. We found that players often download the game due to external motivators such as ads or a reward for playing the game. People often stay playing the game due to game mechanics that strongly encourage the player to form relationships with other players. Players often quit the game due to conflicts with their offline obligations or due to lack of interest in the game. Observing the beginning, middle and end of game play shows that players change motivations over time and respond to external motivators in addition to internal motivators.
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Video games through the refrain: Innovation and familiarity
More LessThe video game market is dominated by numerous franchises and many players lament that games are becoming boring and repetitive. However it is evident that players desire these games, which sell well. This article suggests that Deleuze and Guattari’s refrain can help explain why players desire repetition in games, and what kinds of risks and potentials it can provide. Specifically, in regard to gameplay I consider elements including genre and mechanics, and player’s desire to re-experience games. To explore repetition in players I consider game communities and the gamer identity, which can open up players to difference or encourage restriction. I argue that understood through the refrain, repetition in video games has the potential to generate difference, innovation and connections, but also possibly a closing off. The refrain is a useful tool for games studies and industry workers who are interested in understanding how new experiences can emerge from repetition.
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Playing it safe
By Mark MullenFor the past 30 years museums and art galleries on both sides of the Atlantic have been resistant to exhibiting digital games as art and have instead embedded them in exhibitions and displays that have portrayed them as exemplars of design. This conservative approach has largely failed to achieve the stated purpose of many of these exhibitions: to foster a wider public appreciation for games and encourage more sophisticated conversations about gaming. This article argues that curators for video game exhibitions have been co-opted by the ideological norms of the tech sector which has produced a reluctance to engage critically with their subject matter and a willingness to overlook ethical problems within the videogame industry.
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Avatar, Assembled: The Social and Technical Anatomy of Digital Bodies, Jaime Banks (ed.) (2018)
More LessReview of: Avatar, Assembled: The Social and Technical Anatomy of Digital Bodies, Jaime Banks (ed.) (2018)
New York, Bern, Berlin, Brussels, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford and Wien: Peter Lang, 328 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-43313-560-6, h/bk, $52.95
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Ideology and the Virtual City: Video games, Power Fantasies and Neoliberalism, Jon Bailes (2018)
More LessReview of: Ideology and the Virtual City: Video games, Power Fantasies and Neoliberalism, Jon Bailes (2018)
Winchester and Washington: Zero Books, 112 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-78904-164-4, p/bk, £9.99
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Ideology and the Virtual City: Video games, Power Fantasies and Neoliberalism, Jon Bailes (2018)
More LessReview of: Ideology and the Virtual City: Video games, Power Fantasies and Neoliberalism, Jon Bailes (2018)
Alresford: Zero Books, 93 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-78904-164-4, p/bk, £9.99
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